Monday, January 25, 2010

First Day Follies

I had bad insomnia last night, even though I went to bed early-ish (10). And then I did the unthinkable, I turned off the alarm without getting up. Usually, I'm pretty good about not doing that, but I did it. And when I turned over, it was 7:30. So I hopped up, made caffeine, at breakfast, made lunch, showered, dressed and got myself to work by 8:08, just in time to get the very last parking space in the lot nearest my building.

I don't have class until 10, so it's not a matter of being late to class, but of having to haul heavy books (Riverside Chaucer, I'm looking at you!) from the car.

I've now completed my last minute fiddling with class folders, written an advising of the month club letter to my advisees, and written a committee thing.

***

I have an office near a corner, so I have three close neighbors, one of whom is a creative writer. Why is it that a certain subset of male creative writing students think they're beats, complete with berets and sexist attitudes, and ask me about my colleague's schedule, since apparently any woman in an office must perforce be a male's secretary? My creative writing colleague is neither a beat nor, to the best of my knowledge, deeply sexist.

***

I still get nervous before the first classes of the semester. I'm jittery now, with 19 minutes to go. I think there's some more mindless paperwork I can take care of.

***

I tried to get into the electronic roster to make myself an attendance page, but no such luck. It's down! Yay for computer problems!

11 comments:

At my university it is not a creative writing thing. All of our students seem to wander by asking random professors where other professors are and when they'll be back. (I don't think it's really a gendered thing either; about 85% of our students are female, and I expect they probably do it to male professors too. It strikes me as garden-variety cluelessness from students who don't really get the concept of office hours or know how to look things up on the syllabus.)

What really baffles me are the students who ask even when the professor's schedule is posted on the door. I'm wondering if some of them simply do not trust written information.

laughing about the creative writing sub-types. some of the people i remember from college who self-identified as "creative" thought that somehow excused them from paying attention to mundane things. they also didn't keep track of assignments or deadlines, figuring they could always ask one of the less creative students. they mooched food when they missed the cafeteria, and saw no reason to crank down the volume if they needed music at 2:00 a.m. let's not even talk about the issue of laundry.

Yeah, students with issues...I showed our rental to a clutch of theatre and creative writing majors; one heaved a truly melancholic sigh and despaired of ever, EVER finding "lodgings" with a "garret"--undoubtedly so that she would be able to brew up dozens of cups of tea across several days with a single tea bag into which she could sop a biscuit on her way to consumptive malnutrition as she reaches for stellar ignominy...

Our problem with students and office hours is across the board -- at least for the students. The students definitely come to me more frequently than they do my male office neighbors. It's not the questions about the clearly posted office hours (and teaching times) that bothers me as much.

It's when students ask me to take a message for them. And when they act put out when I tell them to email their professor instead.

Oh yeah, I also agree that students are more likely to ask female professors to "take messages" than male professors. I don't leave my office door open any more for that reason. Instead, I post a note on the door that says, "I'm here. Please knock." That seems to alert students who aren't mine that I'm actually doing work and don't wish to be interrupted.

I went to look for a professor today and realized that I had to stand with my nose practically touching his door to read the schedule he posted. It was in tiny font on a half-page, surrounded by cartoons and bumper stickers. So I wonder if students who have the patience of gnats for seeking out information less readily available than Google ads are simply unable or unwilling to look at such a schedule.

I love your behavior. I'm a nervous wreck, and this semester it's as if I've forgotten how to connect my laptop to project things. I don't do outlines, but I show pictures :) Oh, and if I export the roster from our online course list, I can't move it to an easy attentance sheet. Grrr.

I spent yesterday feeling freaked out because classes were starting and I wasn't on campus. I didn't have any classes that day, but still, it felt wrong not to be there, like I was skipping work. Now that I've actually shown up in class, I feel much better. Hope you're having a good first week!

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I profess literature. More specifically, I'm a feminist, female Shakespearean who also teaches composition regularly, early modern literature, Chaucer on occasion, graduate classes in writing and research, literary theory, poetry, drama. Welcome to my world.

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